Chapter Thirteen

                                    

                                          
I floated from class to class. Everything bounced off me.
                          
"Hey, Riley!"
                          
"Hi, Riley, listen, I have this idea for a politics podcast..."
                          
"I know you already have two true crime shows, but you could do another one, right?"
                          
I didn't take any of it in. Walking into Ms. Warren's class, taking in the smell of acrylic paint and clay and ink, was the first moment of clarity since I said those words to Chloe. It felt like I was stepping out of a fog and back into real life. The first person I saw, coming out of that fog, was Noah. He sat across in his usual spot, dressed like a boxer: a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over a beanie that hid all but a few artfully arranged whisps of blond hair. He watched me as I entered the room, and it was almost instantly too hot in there.  
                          
"Okay, folks," Ms. Warren said, clapping her hands to start the class. "We're going to do some solo work, and then later Noah is going to present his summer project."
                          
Noah's tiny smile grew, like he was barely able to control it, like this project was just so great he couldn't wait to share it. In twelve years of education, I don't think I've ever seen anyone that excited to present to the class. Jesus, what was this summer project?
                          
Ms. Warren picked a model for our warmup, a ceramics student named Bridget with her hair in a braid that wrapped around her head. Noah grabbed his sketchbook and began eagerly working, tilting his head to the side, totally engaged.
                          
It was the perfect opportunity to watch him and try to suss out what the fuck it was about him that made me feel like I was on fire. There was something about this skinny blond white boy that just... stuck in my head, or something. Was it his appearance? I couldn't deny that he was good-looking. He held back the whisps of his hair with his other hand as he sketched, and every few seconds, he looked up at Bridget, his green eyes serious as he scrutinized her. His lips—God, his lips. Pillowy, soft, slightly pouty, like they were begging for me to...
                          
To what, Riley? I didn't want to finish that thought. That would make this serious and real and important, and that was scary. But I knew. I knew how I would finish that sentence if I wasn't afraid. 
                          
Kiss them. Begging for me to kiss them. 
                          
I shivered.
                          
I opened my own sketchbook and grabbed a charcoal pencil from the mug in the middle of the table. No one was directly beside me, but I artfully arranged my History textbook so it was concealing the fact that I wasn't sketching Bridget. 
                          
I traced out Noah's shape, slumped against the table while he worked, hair poking out between the knuckles of his long fingers. His spindly legs crossed under the table, one of his Vans sneakers dangling off his foot in mid-air. With a few swipes of the pencil, I suggested the shape of his utterly kissable lips. I already knew I had many hours of looking at this drawing ahead of me as I sank deeper and deeper into this stupid crush. 
                          
What the fuck did that mean? I hated him until... well, I never hated him. He just got under my skin the moment we met. But how did I go from getting flustered by him to—oh. 
                          
I had had a crush on him from the minute I saw him in the parking lot on the first day of school.
                          
Was I just confused, after breaking up with Chloe? Was I projecting my feelings for Chloe onto the first attractive stranger who strolled into my field of vision?
                          
No. Because it had been a while since I'd had those feelings for Chloe. And if that was the case, wouldn't my brain have fixated on, like, someone with Chloe's hair color or fashion sense? At least someone female, surely. Because right now I was carefully shading his Adam's apple, and lusting over that particular feature was entirely new.
                          
But it was real. I studied his sharp jawline in order to perfectly capture its angle. There was a little hollow underneath it, a dip between the tendons near his pulse point. The question of what it would feel like under my tongue burst into my mind and my mouth watered. 
                          
Okay, screw never feeling this way about a guy before—I had never literally drooled over anyone before. 
                          
"Are you ready to present, Noah?" Ms. Warren asked with twenty minutes left to go in the class.
                          
Noah stood and walked to the window, peering out at the front of the school. I let myself look at his ass for two seconds, but even that was too much. My brain felt like it had been scrambled, like if someone had asked me my name I wouldn't have known the answer.
                          
"It's go time," he said. "If y'all could follow me..."
                          
He marched us into the hallway, walking jauntily, hands in his pockets. Every few seconds he glanced back at us and smiled mischeviously. 
                          
"Where is he taking us?" Katie Stevens hissed to me.
                          
"Quiet, please," Ms. Warren whisper-shouted. "Don't disturb the other classes."
                          
It was almost impossible not to. 
                          
Noah led us to the front doors of the school, pausing just inside them to put on a pair of Ray-Bans. He burst out the doors and hopped down the stone steps to a podium set up on the landing. At the bottom of the stairs was a gaggle of reporters. I'm serious—reporters, news vans behind them, microphones in hand. When they saw Noah, they quit gabbing and clustered around. Camera men focused their lenses on him. 
                          
We filled the stairs behind him, like this was a political rally and we were his base crowding around in support. The reporters went silent, aside from the clicks of some camera flashes going off. From my position just behind him, I watched Noah pull up Twitter on his phone, open his drafts folder, and press send on one of many draft tweets.
                          
"Ladies and gentlemen of the press," he drawled, "if you would please direct your attention to my Twitter account, that's @noahlord, I've just tweeted a link to a blog post telling the story of how I've been running the highest-rated, most exclusive, and most fictional restaurant in Vancouver, Shiraad, for over a year. Thought you and your outlets might be interested, seeing as you all published rave reviews of a restaurant that never existed. No questions at this time."
                          
Noah turned away from the podium. In the chaos of our classmates chattering and the reporters starting to splutter questions in apoplectic rage, Noah came right for me. He was inches away from me, close enough to inhale his scent—leather and spice. He smelled exactly like an Edison. 
                          
He gripped my forearm and asked, "Are you coming tomorrow?"
                          
"Of course," I said.
                          
Noah nodded once. I wasn't sure if I had imagined it, but I thought the corner of his mouth twitched upward. 
                          
Before, going to this party had seemed like a colossally bad idea, but now wild horses couldn't keep me away.